GAUVIN: Complaining about the ‘untouchables’ leaves non-voter barking at the moon

Written by Paul Gauvin

May 27, 2011

Skip Simpson is a bona-fide Barnstable resident, double taxpayer, and registered voter. He served time with the U.S. Navy as part of a helicopter search and rescue team. He does his civic duties. He can vote for the local town council, school committee, state representative, congressman and president of the mighty, overgenerous and fiscally abused United States.

But he can’t vote to elect a simple fire commissioner where his heavily taxed and tourist-dependent business is located. Therein lies one of the inequities of the archaic but untouchable fire district system that rends the town with five autonomous political fiefdoms that tax and spend without townwide oversight or input.

When it comes to parity of the vote, Simpson, despite being a town resident, veteran, family man and owning a business in Hyannis, complains that he is denied a ballot, therefore, a voice in the budget approval process of the Hyannis Fire District. But when it comes time every year, the district sends him a love note: Pay your district tax, or else…and Simpson does.

Pre-empting him from a Hyannis vote is that he doesn’t also “live” in Hyannis, where his business is located, but in another village in the same town with its own fire district. Lord forbid that a man with two properties in town and paying two taxes be allowed two votes, one in each district where he pays taxes.

The issue looms large now as the Hyannis Fire District contemplates a new fire station that Simpson says could cost as much as $20 million that his business profits, no matter how large or small, will have to help amortize. And, he feels, the non-voting Hyannis business community will be paying a disproportionate, and thus, unfair, share of the cost...all that without a say.

Briefly put, Hyannis business pays, in addition to a real property tax, a personal property tax. In addition it pays another amount because of the exemption for residents, whose load is lightened. Simpson says that his Hyannis Fire District tax bill equaled 45 percent of his business’s town tax bill in 2010.

“There is something wrong when elected officials give voting constituents a ‘tax break’ at the expense of the non-voting constituents, or, in other words, there is something wrong when disenfranchised constituents are assessed more than voting constituents.” The revolutionaries had a term for it: “Taxation Without Representation.”

Like the town, the fire district has a real estate tax exemption that benefits residential property owners at the expense of non-resident businesses small and large that pick up the difference, again with no voice in the matter.

Just last week, the Hyannis Fire District approved another $675,000, in addition to a previously passed $3 million land appropriation, just to design and permit a new station, again without the voice of local businessmen of Simpson’s ilk. And further, an effort to cap the construction spending at $8 million failed. Perhaps Simpson could be right, that the total cost could reach $20 million, a big chunk for a little district. He doesn’t overlook the possibility that someday soon the district tax on his business could exceed the municipal tax…and that without him being able to vote on it.

I toured the fire station a few years ago and can say the village has grown faster than the physical fire department building. Things are very tight in there, possibly pinching response time and affecting morale. But with the COMM Taj Mahal still in mind, jittery Hyannis villagers ask who benefits from a station too large, the crew or the taxpayer?

There seems to be an ingrained tendency to construct public buildings “for the future” rather than “for today.” The larger the building, the more maintenance and utilities costs. Like some Cape school districts, including Barnstable, school building needs were overestimated. The result is unneeded classrooms and expenses as enrollments dwindle in a changing world.

It is understandable that an owner of a business in Hyannis who lives in Chatham be denied a vote since he or she is not a registered voting resident in the town. But Simpson is a voting town resident, yet the Hyannis Fire District franchise treats him as though he were from Bora-Bora.

There is another voting issue worth mentioning about fire districts. They have the same problem town meetings had (and still have) with conflict-of-interest voting. It is usual for a town councilor, for example, to abstain from voting on any issue that will directly benefit him or family.

Meanwhile, teachers and their families still vote on self-interest issues at town meetings, and fire department personnel and families, who usually make up the bulk of fire district voters, can vote an any item from which they personally benefit.

If one learns anything about Barnstable and its fire districts over years of observation, it’s that that they have been elevated to royalty by the populations they serve, voting inequality and self-interest balloting notwithstanding. They are not going to change. The voting system will see to that.